The Bent Canoe/Transcript
WORK IN PROGRESS; NEEDS HUMAN REVIEW [ gunshots ] [ bird squawks ] harold: The book of genesis says that god created heaven and earth in seven days. Well, every seven days, we move heaven and earth to bring you the greatest show in the history of the universe! Wa-a-a! You know, but we're only mortals, so this is the result, basically, but, you know, considering the budget and the talent, it's not bad. Well, here he is, the most not baddest guy of them all, the star of "the red green show," and my uncle -- thanks so very much -- ladies and gentlemen, mr. Red green! Thank you, harold. Thank you and welcome to possum lodge. Harold, I notice you have kind of a biblical theme going there. Yes, I do, and it's all leading up to some nifty creations from my miracle box here. [ keyboard clacking ] wa-a-a! That was a miracle, wasn't it, uncle red? I don't think so, harold. Miracles tend to be kind of good things. I would put this in the category of pestilence and famine. Well, we had a great week up at the lodge. We had the possum lake regatta going here, which is a huge boat race. It's open to all classes and all lengths and everything. We probably had about, uh, 45 sailboats, I guess, on the lake from possum lodges all over north america vying for the coveted windy possum trophy. I'll tell you, I haven't seen that much canvas flapping in the breeze since they served chili at the toga party. But, uh, you know, I'll tell you, we won it again. Moose thompson and stinky peterson, uh, came in first place and defended our unbeaten winning streak of, uh, one. Oh, yeah. That was quite an accomplishment. They won by taking the lodge water-skiing towboat that had, like, a 400-horsepower outboard on it. Yeah, all right. Well, we did have a few complaints, but, hey, a loophole is a loophole. We may have to tighten up the rules for next year. Wa-a-a. And once you eliminate powerboats, you might also want to consider taking out, like, boarding parties and shooting flares in the competition's sails. Well, what do you have left, harold? Just a bunch of sailboats racing against each other. Uncle red, yachting is not a contact sport. Well, then we've improved it. Anyway, the guys really enjoyed the regatta. We did well in everything except white-water rafting, finesse docking, and sportsmanship. But I'll tell you about that a little later in the show. [ birds chirping ] that was a cue, laser face. Oh, sorry. I was drifting off. I'm back. Well? I'm thinking. I'm thinking. Harold, you got any sixes? [ laughs ] go fish. Bill, william... Have any fives? Whoo-ooh! [ mumbles indistinctly ] whoo! [ laughs ] well, this game's getting too rich for me. I think I'll go for a ride in the r.V. Anybody interested? Anybody want to come along, go for a little burn in the curve in the r.V.? Who's up for it? Huh? Be a lot of fun. Who's there? Who's coming? Harold? Bill? Coming? Helmut, come on. You want to go for a little run, don't you? Red, I know you're always ready for it. Well, actually, it's, uh -- what's today? Oh, yeah. Well, today's the day I go by myself. I got to give her a little solo burn, do a little lone-wolf thing -- you know, that kind of -- but you guys have a little fun playing your little card game here. Douglas? Want to go for a ride in the r.V.? No. Well, you can't come, anyway. Douglas, would you like to play fish? I don't gamble. Which is more than I can say for helmut here. What? I just saw the canoe. Oh, yeah. Sorry. "sorry"? "sorry"?! You turned a piece of lodge equipment into scrap metal, and you say "sorry"? I wanted to go white-water rafting, and we don't have a raft, so I took the canoe. Now we don't have a canoe. What did you do -- go through a hydroelectric plant?! Hey, stuff happens. Yes, it does. Stuff happens. And then stuff gets replaced. Now, you are going to buy us a new canoe, and you are forbidden for three months to use any lodge equipment, and you have to have a bath and a shave! I don't like your tone. You know, douglas, lots of us dent boats and stuff from time to time. Harold: Oh, yeah. Red, this is not dented. It's shredded. It's mangled. I would have thought you'd been happy that I was alive. I am. It would take a lot longer to sue your estate for damages. Now, I'm giving you 24 hours to come up with the money. [ beating and guitar playing ] ♪ picking apples, picking apples ♪ ♪ down at nash's farm ♪ ♪ I climb up the highest branch and get a smartin' ♪ ♪ and a broken arm ♪ ♪ one apple ♪ ♪ two apples ♪ ♪ three apples ♪ ♪ four apples, five ♪ ♪ I never knew you could get that many apples in your mouth ♪ ♪ and still be alive ♪ ♪ eating apples, eating apples ♪ ♪ some from every tree ♪ ♪ the neighbor yells, hey, those apples have worms ♪ it's okay, so do we! Wa-a-a! [ object pounding ] red: This week in the "handyman corner" gonna show you how you can make do and just use what you have. For example, I was going through town the other day, and I saw a whole bunch of these, uh, blue boxes out in front of people's houses, filled up with tin cans. And they were just lying there, you know. It just made my head spin. And, of course, to see that many tin cans, in my mind -- I got the kind of mind that just starts rolling around with the ideas. The first one being to just grab up the boxes of cans and throw them into the van. You know, nobody stopped me or nothing, and I got, I would say, maybe 50 or 60 of the boxes and probably around 8,000 cans, you know, and, uh... So I thought we'd just show you what you can do with stuff like that, uh... Now, uh... Save the boxes for next week. We're gonna show you how to make a pontoon boat. [ box rattling ] uh, but for this week, we're gonna show you what you can do with the cans. Okay? Now, I mean, there's all the obvious stuff, you know -- ashtrays, drinking cups, soap dishes, jewelry boxes, eyeglass frames. Let's see, uh... Change purse or safety boots or even portable urinals. [ clears throat ] but I'd like to concentrate on some multi-can projects you can do using the handyman's secret weapon... [ can rattling ] ...Duct tape. Okay, so we roll a bit of this off, stick it down sticky side up -- sticky side up. It's an important lesson in life. Take two cans roughly of the same size. Join them together like so and just roll it onto the duct tape with the -- going right around the seam. Duct tape's fantastic. You can glue anything with duct tape. It'll glue wood to plastic or metal to glass or doors to cars. You just repeat this process with a third can I've added on here. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if you can glue pudding to air with duct tape. Wouldn't that be something? Big dollop of butterscotch pudding just hanging in your foyer. Good to see you, mom. Come on in. Okay. There we go. You're right. It's a chair leg. Okay, now, uh, we need a seat for our chair. So put down a strip of duct tape. Again, sticky side up. That'll get you through so much of your adult life. Put that down there like that, and then you take the cans -- boy, you know, duct tape sticks well to fingers, too. And, uh, put the cans on the tape just a couple inches apart. Just slap them on like that. Now, these are cans of approximately the same size, there again, get creative. Once you've done that, you just, uh, grab the end of the tape, and you start rolling her up. You know, uh, I bet every one of these cans could tell a story. Don't you? Huh? I mean, if cans could talk. Life's funny like that, isn't it? I don't know if you'd want cans to be talking, you know. What would cans say about you, do you think? If cans could actually talk. Now, you bring that up... Bring that around. And, uh, there's a seat for your chair. Mind you, you're gonna want a small can to sit on that. And there you have it. Who says it's hard to make furniture? Is that not an attractive aluminum lawn chair? Just picture yourself sitting out on that in the sun, and after you have a few drinks, you got enough cans to make yourself a footstool. [ chair rattles ] you know, uh... Something else you can make with tin cans for the kids. And I'll tell you. You get the sound of a youngster, and you have them roller-skating on any kind of a concrete surface, and the noise level gets to the point where you got to talk to them with a lot of sign language there. But, uh, on the other hand, you know, you always know where your kids are. I mean, if that's important to you. It's, uh... [ skates rattle ] what we're talking about here is really imagination. You know, that english writer samuel johnson -- he one time said, uh... "if it wasn't for imagination, a man would be just as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as he was in a duchess." [ clears throat ] he's dead now. Uh, but, you know, I'm just trying to use my imagination, and I'm imagining to take these tin cans and make ourselves an eaves trough. Huh? So we take a can like this, and we just cut the can in half. All right, that's not going just quite as well as I planned, so, uh, why don't we switch over to the handyman's favorite -- uh, power tools? [ tin can clanging in distance ] [ clears throat ] all right, uh, tin snips, huh? Cut right through these. [ inhales deeply, grunting ] it's just a matter of using your imagination. It's like samuel johnson said to lord chesterfield -- "if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." [ clears throat ] he was horsing around with lady chesterfield at the time. Now, poets have an interesting life, don't they? Let's give her a go. [ water trickling ] ohh. Excuse me a minute. [ water trickling continues ] everything you touch, you wreck. I do not. "it is summer. "the dog lies motionless on my front porch. "this is strange because I don't have a dog. "nor do I have a front porch. Obviously, one of us is not home." I tell you, this whole situation with helmut and the crumpled canoe has got the whole lodge buzzing, you know, because if douglas pushes this too far, it could set a real dangerous precedent where people would actually be held responsible for things they wrecked. Well, I don't know. I think maybe people should be responsible for their inabilities. These self-appointed experts are dangerous. I say more power to douglas. For example, the producer and director of the show would be held accountable for the look and the pace and, of course, the audience ratings. What? Well... I do the best with the talent available. Well, harold, we could just replace you with someone more talented. Okay, all right. You know what? You know what I think? I think that people like douglas should be held accountable for the lack of money in the lodge treasury. Wa-a-a! How about that? Yeah, yeah. I thought you'd come around, harold. Okay, here's what I think. I think what we should do is we should -- sorry, uncle red, there's no time for that, not if I'm in control of the pace of the show and everything. Got to go! Glen? Glen?! Hello, red. Well... Oh, no. [ chuckles ] that's not me, red. This is me here. [ chuckling ] that's just a little decoy I rigged up to keep the looters away from the r.V. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a scarecrow thing, you know. Uh-huh. Yeah. Looks just like me, don't it? Doesn't even move. It's perfect, glen. Huh? Say, glen, uh, can you fix a canoe? Well, uh, let's see. Well, you're a lodge brother and all, red, uh... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll have to charge you 10 bucks for the estimate. Well, all right. Yeah, all right. Come on, take a look-see. All righty. [ clears throat ] [ sniffing ] now, uh, what do you think? Where's the canoe? Oh, this is it right here. Has helmut been going over the falls again? Yeah, yeah. Boy, he must know everything there is to know about gravity, huh? So, uh, can you -- can you fix it, glen? Oh, no. This is a write-off, red. Yeah, you might be able to find an art gallery or something that might be interested, but, uh... Ugh. Oh, well. That's too bad, eh? Yeah, well... That'll be 10 bucks, red. Oh, yeah, yeah. Say, glen, uh, you know, uh, instead of paying you the 10, do you think I could do something -- you know, maybe clean up the r.V. Or something rather than cash, you know? Well, you know what? Yeah. Actually, she needs an oil change, red. So, uh, maybe just jump under there, pull out the oil plug. Uh, let her drain in the lake, though, 'cause it makes a hell of a mess right here. Oh, yeah. All right. And I'll go get some oil. Okay. That's a good idea, red. Yeah. [ door opens, closes ] [ engine turns over ] hey, red! [ laughs ] somebody just took off in your van. [ laughs ] I guess you want one of my scarecrows now, don't you? [ chuckling ] hey, just tell me when you need the oil, red. It's right behind you there. [ film projector clicking ] red: Harold's frisbee stuck up a tree gave us a subject for this week's "adventures with bill." there he is, uh, all set to help us get the frisbee down. Now, first plan is... Not gonna work. Plan "b," subsection 4 -- climb a tree that has no branches on it. Let's think this through once in a while, can we, bill? [ grunting ] now, when he made that gesture, I thought he wanted me to do it, and I thought, "no, he wants my --" well, okay, all right. I -- yeah. That is what he meant. All right. And then this doesn't -- bill's not light. Aah! [ thud ] all right, he's gonna just knock it down with a stick. Why didn't he start with this? Oh, wait. Oh. It's -- he hit it, and it went up. It actually went up instead of -- no, god, no. Ohh. And it's way up there -- 50-, 60-foot tree, and way, way -- now what do we do, bill? That bill never gives up, unfortunately. So he tied this rope around himself, and he's gonna throw the end of the rope through the fork in the tree, and then I'll pull -- I pull down on the rope. But what happens -- it hit the van, and then the loop was a lasso knot caught around the trailer hitch, which we didn't notice. So I started pulling down on the rope and trying to pull bill up the tree, and what neither one of us realized was that harold had decided to take the van into town to buy himself a new frisbee. What he was doing, of course, was pulling the rope. [ zip! ] aah! [ pop! ] oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh. He went up the tree and came back down, and the van's still going. Aah! The good news is throat we got the frisbee back. You okay with the plug, huh? Oh. Beautiful day. [ insects chirping ] well, the lodge is kind of divided into two camps on this thing with the canoe. On the one hand, there's people who think that helmut shouldn't have to replace the canoe or even repair it. They think that anybody who can turn, actually, a metal boat inside out -- you know, that's something to be admired, even with a little tinge of fear. And then in the other camp, you have the pay-as-you-play people, which is mainly douglas. You know, actually, uncle red, douglas has convinced moose thompson to support him. Wow. Wonder how he got moose on his side. Maybe he removed a thorn from his paw. Moose can sway a few votes. That guy's got fists like tractors. Wa-a-a! I'd change my vote. Wa-a-a! You know, if I had one. You know, this is gonna make the lads think twice. I'll tell you. It might even make you think once, harold. How do -- how do you mean? When it happens, you'll know. [ screeching ] well, either moose thompson has just persuaded his first lodge member, or that's the call to a meeting. No, that's the call to the meeting, all right. Come on, uncle red. Let's get down there and see what's going on. I wonder if any of the lodge members are intimidated. Wa-a-a! Well, uh, there's gonna probably be some nasty language and some violent threats and a lot of, uh, crisis and conflict and all kinds of horrible things going on down there, so I really don't want to miss this. [ indistinct conversations ] [ screeching continues ] all rise! Shh! All: Quando omni flunkus, moritati. [ clears throat ] the floor recognizes douglas hendrychuck. Thank you, red. Well, everyone, I have some excellent news. Aw, great! I've discovered -- thank you, harold. I've discovered why are treasury is empty. Whoa, that's great. This is a list of all the things that helmut has broken over the years. When I totaled what he totaled, it came to 20,000. Dollars or things? Dollars. [ clears throat ] 10,000 things. Well, maybe if I made a list of all the stuff I've fixed over the years, that would come to 20,000, too. I think not, helmut. Half the items on this list, you wrecked by fixing them. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, helmut fixes a lot of things around here -- like the pump. He fixes the pump, and we all know how expensive plumbers are, right? [ object rattling ] noo! [ rattling stops ] whoo. Helmut, you're a menace! [ clears throat ] well, now, um, I feel very strongly, and, more importantly, so does moose thompson over there -- thank you, moose -- that helmut should reimburse the lodge for damages. Everybody's surprised you're going along with this, moose. If we applied this rule to you, you owe us for 7 beds, 100 chairs, and a wall. Well, actually not, red. You see, in order to get moose's support, I made an immunity deal with him. Well, hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Let's put some common sense into this, all right? This is stupid. I mean, this is really stupid. This is dumb. Look, I make a living out of fixing things that you guys broke, all right? So if you take that away, you bankrupt the only marina on possum lake. I mean, that's dumb. That's just stupid. Well, now, wait a minute. We'll still need repairs. It's just now the members will pay instead of the lodge. Oh. So I might get paid? Mm-hmm. Oh. Uh, I'm for it. I'm for it. No, no. No, no. Wait now. Glen has a very good point here. No, no, red. Just forget what I said. Just move on, red. That's okay. That's okay. Now, glen, you see, if people have to pay for stuff that they break, they'll start being careful, and they'll start not using stuff, right? And then there won't be any damage for you to repair. Oh, uh, well, that's actually what I meant. That sounds like what I meant. It was stupid, just dumb, just stupid. Now, wait a minute. You don't fix anything anyways. We've got a 14-foot lapstrake that's been in for repairs since 1952. It'll be ready Tuesday... Night, uh... Or Wednesday morning, early maybe. Well, why don't we put this thing to a vote? Huh? All those in favor of the members like helmut here being charged for whatever they break, say "aye." aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay! Sorry, douglas. [ clears throat ] well, it -- it was close. Right. So if there's no other lodge business? Okay, bill, I'm gonna call on helmut here to give us the evening's entertainment. All right. Thank you, red. Thank you. So, I was white-water rafting. I wish I hadn't brought my mom there 'cause we were going over the falls, and it'd come over -- the canoe bent up. You know, uh, listening to douglas and helmut present their cases to the 46 normally slack-jawed individuals who listen, in some cases comprehend, and then cast their votes as their hearts and their conscience dictated, I couldn't help but think that if we had a tv and a good football game was on, none of this would have happened. Men are like gas. They fill the space available. Anyway, if my wife is watching, I'll be coming straight home after the meeting, and I'm feeling kind of wide awake, so why don't we hit the sack early? So, until next time, on behalf of harold and myself and the whole gang up here at possum lodge, keep your stick on the ice. yeah, so I was like going like this with my hands, and I kept on scooping little kids out of the water. It's difficult, you know, to move the boat through the water, like, with your hands open like that -- helmut, you're tracking mud on the carpet there. Eh! Anyway... Anyway...